(August 17, 2010 at 2:40 pm)Eilonnwy Wrote: Well, it was in the chat where there are no rules, and aloah is not a member, so you have not broken any rule.

I agree eventually this person may have been banned, but sometimes the preachy trolls can be a little amusing before they fly off the handle and get banned.

But I more posted this here in case anyone wanted a stab at tearing apart the statements, if this person ever does troll the chat again.

Atheism only affects our behaviour, if it does at all, because it is a minority position. If it were a position as widely held as a-fairyism, then there'd be no need for atheist forums, etc. Besides, the effect it has on our lives is fairly minimal. We might debate a religious nut every now and then; that's about it. Our morality, purpose, Sunday morning routine and so forth are not dictated by a common source. They are our own. Most of us have shared values, like belief in reason and science and compassion. Most other people share these too, however, except where it comes to religion. To compare atheism to a religion is therefore nonsense of the highest order.

Entertaining. I thought atheism was the disbelief in god, not a god who apparently existed at some point and then died. That would be a sad affair. lol

(August 20, 2010 at 2:45 am)Entropist Wrote:

This guy hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately no matter how many times you bring up the points raised in the video, religious people keep bringing up that atheism is somehow a religion or belief system and that it requires faith. Their mind is too thick to comprehend what atheism even is or what it isn't.

Since when does not believing in fairy tales and invisible sky daddies require faith?

(August 20, 2010 at 2:00 am)everythingafter Wrote:

(August 17, 2010 at 2:32 pm)Eilonnwy Wrote:

Entertaining. I thought atheism was the disbelief in god, not a god who apparently existed at some point and then died. That would be a sad affair. lol

Atheism is merely a disbelief in god(s) there are no conditions.

There's an old joke beloved of apologists:

God is dead (Sartre)
Sartre is dead (God)

There was indeed a popular 'God is dead' school of thought in the 1960's. A natural progression of existential philosophy for some.(Hence the Sartre joke) I think was it was actually Neitzsche who made the claim,viz that God was killed by the enlightenment. Sartre simply accepted the claim. I think that's about right; it's about 35 year since I read any philosophy. (I don't count Dawkins or Hitchens)

Surely you meant Nietzsche and not Sartre?

(August 20, 2010 at 3:48 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: Surely you meant Nietzsche and not Sartre?

Yes,but I could be wrong.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't need a god to tell you if Nietzsche was dead. Also, would it be possible for a god to die and if he was dead why would anyone want to worship him? he's dead and can no longer care– unless there is an afterlife for gods.

What a lot of people miss is the context in which Nietzsche wrote that, and also the full statement there: "God is dead, and we have killed him!"

That "we" is very important there, and in his little parable in Zarathustra he was trying to illustrate that it was western civilization, Christians included, that had "killed" their god. The seeds of its own destruction were within Christianity itself (I think Tertullian was the only one to recognize it): Christianity inherited the Greek need for explaining the world in rational terms. The arguments of the Christian god's existence are based in Greek philosophy, not the Bible). Christ was defined in terms of Greek philosophy, the Christian god is the "uncased cause," the "prime mover," (Aristotle) or the mystical unity of all things (Plato and Plotinus). Look at the all the quibbling over esoteric Christological terms: you could be killed over a nuance!

But it was also a crack in the dam that eventually spread-- and ultimately led to Copernicus and so on. By the time of the Enlightenment, Christianity was only a husk of its former self, its fervor spent. It it any surprise that Christianity was at its strongest during the Dark Ages? --And this is what Nietzsche was addressing. We live in a modern world where MOST people rely on reason to get through the day-- in fact, we take it for granted-- even MOST religious people. What remains of Christianity (and the Hellenic-based metaphysics it inherited) is mere inertia. The glory days of religion are over, Christendom is a thing of the past, even if Christianity nominally still exists today-- it is hardly what it used to be, shrill fundamentalists notwithstanding.

(August 20, 2010 at 3:17 am)padraic Wrote: Neitzsche ... made the claim,viz that God was killed by the enlightenment. Sartre simply accepted the claim.

Sartre's position was more that if God does exist, it would't actually make any difference to us. The existentialist position is that since what defines an individual is his actions, which only occur as a result of the individual's free choice after his existence has been established, then even a valid proof of the existence of God wouldn't make any difference to the fundamental problem of being human, which is how to find, create and define the human being. The rationalistic atheist position is completely different from this. Rationalistic atheists are hostages to a not yet established proof of the existence of God. Thus when the rational atheist is asked, what would he or she do if they died, went to heaven and discovered that God actually exists after all, if they aren't avoiding the question on the grounds of its hypothetical nature, they tend to give a reply that suggests acceptance of the newly discovered subordination of humanity to the deity. The rationalistic atheist is therefore always subject to a risk that the existentialist deftly avoids, and is more vulnerable to replicating religious thinking from an atheistic position.